My second column’s under edits right now and should be up on THND a bit later in the day. In the interim, I had a thought. I’ve been going back and watching “Deadwood” through, and I’ve spoken before about its similarities and relation to “The Wire.” But in trying to frame a reference to other television, I came up with a sort of weak correlation… I really don’t want to oversell the connection, but I could see a small through-line between the two shows and “Evangelion” - two brief points:
These shows are about something higher than their genre would normally attest - higher points are made about the human condition - but you need to immerse yourself in the programs to see these things, as on first glance they may appear to be merely well-created examples of a type: a western, a cop show, a “giant robot” show.
They each have, despite various moments of personal triumphs and rare flashes of hope, a bleak outlook on that same human condition - while their messages may not be negative at their core, they each take you deliberately down in the muck of the worst humanity is capable of.
So, it led me to a question that’s more general - these programs all exist and have complexity because they’re television serials, with room to breathe - room to flesh out stock characters and make them human, room to bring you to the darkness and back, often over and over again. There’s sort of a pervailing question in writing - the comics industry has faced this a lot since the 80’s - over whether you can look that closely and learn things about “the human condition” without being so dark.
I can think of films that can explore this subject with a very positive atmosphere - to use a comparatively simple example, Amelie is an almost relentlessly positive movie that has things to explore. But films are by nature shorter. My question is: is there, or can there be, a television show with that much to say which does not sink into ugliness (keep in mind, I love all three of these programs under discussion, and they’re rightly well-thought of)? Or does an extended period require you to eventually go down that road?
Earlier this week, there was the following exchange on Twitter with my friend and co-writer Eddie Suave:
Eddie: “When the fuck did they decide to give Knight Rider another go? That’s the orig, Knight Rider 2000 whatev, and Team Knight Rider before this.” Me: “Also, the Hulk Hogan one where Knight Rider was a boat.”
My brother, being who he is, sent me the following over instant messenger not long after:
“I drove by the school that they blew up near the end of the Hulk Hogan show. They filmed that shit in Disney’s fake paradise. I believe he kept the boat because I remembered someone saying that they raced him when he was in it once. People used to see him all the time where a lived. Well, everyone but me. hahaha… I just connected everything I remembered regarding him… I also had t-shirts…Hulkamania or whatever, when I was a kid…”
Followed, later, by these comments, which I wasn’t even online for:
“I believe Airwolf had a better chance of being included as a Knight Rider type vehicle than that boat. Because there were two episodes in particular of Airwolf that hinted at a possible soul. One was I think a computer virus that represented the ‘ghost’ of the helicopter’s creator, who was a real dickwad, and they ‘froze it out’ by flying into the atmosphere. Or thought so. It obviously showed up again, or hints of it, at the end of the episode. And there was an episode where they were working on the helicopter and it actually made a sound…Santini apologized for ‘hurting her.’ Probably a little joke, but still… Yes, I followed that show religiously.”
The folks over at The House Next Door have been gracious enough to host one of my essays - a rumination on visual composition in “Eva,” tying into my general study of visual language.
This is the beginning of what I hope will be a fruitful partnership with the site - I’m talking with editor Keith Uhlich about doing more over there, and if something gets locked in, I’ll announce it here.
I’ve clearly been catching up, bit by bit, since my medical issues surfaced. It’s my hope - and sadly I can’t be held to it - that within the week I’ll be hip-deep into PE.Net’s look at GAINAX, which should should be a pretty varied sort of articles. I recently saw the full, subtitled “Rebuild” and I’m not sure that I’m yet capable of offering salient commentary on the thing… but I’ve plenty of other content planned.
But what has everyone else on the internet been up to? Let’s check in with some friends of the site.
T.M. Camp, who was also recently kind enough to contribute here to the site, has just wrapped up his audiobook podcasting of his recent novels and is about to open a brand new podcast, focusing on writing - a sort of broadcast workshop. It’s my intention to contribute a few items myself (it’s certainly only fair), but we’ll see how it goes. He also passed along this fantastic photoblog of “Entrances to Hell,” which is fodder for a hundred story inspirations, right there.
The last Mega Man viral video that I posted to the site went over well with readers, and so I offer this tribute to the Airman stage (with special guest)
It’s been a while since I posted the “Artistic License,” but I do like to dip the occasonal toe in the pool of ideas that spawned some of those license ideas - while I’m hardly going to play at being BoingBoing (as I’ve written in the past, actually), but I came upon this on Twitter (’Twas Ben Templesmith, I think - been some time since I grabbed the link) and wanted to share it: a pamphlet from the ACLU (PDF) on what to do if you’re stopped by the police in various situations, and what your actual legal rights are.
Okay, links aside now, let’s talk about something else I found on the internet - or rather, something else that I was directed to over Twitter:
There’s a segment to the Clu Campbell draft of the LM4 novel (still coming, I swear!) in which I had a character who was supposed to speak in tired internet memes. You know, it was actually harder finding them than you’d think, strange as that sounds. It’s not the sort of thing that’s well-recorded, especially since so many (though certainly not all) are spontaneous occurrences. This timeline, then, which for some reason I can’t successfully embed here on the site (grr), is something pretty amazing after a fashion. When all of these goofy little gags and videos are all collected in one place, with accompanying summaries and other commentary, and with approximate dates, it becomes a legitimately interesting study on what’s been in the background of the internet. What’s more, it seems like it’s still being added to - and thank goodness for that, because I want this record to grow and only become more informative, a more concrete record of the world’s strangest culture.
And you know what? Some of them are still actually pretty funny. I won’t say which ones.
Weekend Discussion Question: For those of you who managed to read this far down. I was reading “The Confusion” earlier today and I was wondering something. In pondering the character of Jack Shaftoe, who is a wonderful example of the traditional “badass” male archetype - I realized that you don’t really see a lot of it in prose, do you? In movies, sure, by the bucketful, too many perhaps. But when I think of prose, I can make an argument for someone like Sherlock Holmes, who was a drug-addled mad genius, but not really that kind of figure. The obvious answer, of course, would be Ian Fleming’s James Bond - but I’m calling Agent 007 as officially claimed by the movies in the popular consciousness, at this point. Possible contenders might include figures like Conan or John Carter - but do they fit all the necessary criteria? Is Hiro Protagonist disqualified because he calls himself one? Discuss, I dare you!
So I ask you - who are the baddest asses in prose? Please note that any votes for Papa Hemingway will be fed to the cats.
Please leave your answer in the comments, not in my inbox. Y’all should be allowed to argue over this with each other, like on real websites.
“The Venture Bros.” - most perfect television show… ever? Oh, sure, you’ve got your “The Wire” this and that, but has even the great Omar Little grabbed a guy with his sphincter and thrown him across the cabin of a pirate ship?
Seriously, though - I’m not certain how this show happened. It’s on Adult Swim, for God’s sake - I’ve got a “Sealab 2020″ soft spot as big as the next roughly college-age nerd, but “The Venture Bros.” should be, by all rights, a terrible show. Superhero parodies, overly-violent humor, and references to the 70’s and 80’s cartoons that the show is already supposedly a parody of - aren’t we in “Family Guy” territory here? I know we’re not supposed to talk about this, but on paper, doesn’t this all sound a little wrong?
The folks behind the show - Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick - these guys are so frustratingly smart, maybe too much for their own good. It wasn’t enough to deflate these icons for humor, and it wasn’t enough for them to show how these characters were representative of the nuclear age, the space race, and the promises and hope inherent - an age that let us down, the parodic deflation a statement on America’s loss of innocence. No, instead they tied that nuclear age intrinsically to the idea of the nuclear family, and showed a far darker, uglier failure at the core of modern society, and then proceeded to make that hilarious.
“The Venture Bros.” began two and a half seasons ago with the image of one twin strangling another in the womb. Yes, something’s wrong at conception here; every character on “The Venture Bros.” is not only broken - that would be easy - but tragically broken in the most classic style - broken like Oedipus, like Hamlet; every family unit is inverted, artificial, or rotten.
Fan dialogue of late has been largely circling on parentage of the various members of the Venture clan - is Hank really Rusty’s son? Is Rusty a biological child, or a clone? Was Dr. Quymn related to Rusty? Who are the missing moms, and where are they? Family is so twisted in “The Venture Bros.” that audience reaction is largely to deny familial relations entirely. Often riddles are suggested where there are none - a leftover reticence to acknowledge how complex many of these characters have become, an enormous distance from the show’s straight-comedic beginnings.
I’d actually like to see a more-fully constructed essay on the place of women - which is to say, the near-total lack of same, in “The Venture Bros.” I’m the last person who’d call for a “feminist reading of a text,” but in commenting on these issues, and specifically through these properties that were products of their time, the writers have specifically and deliberately chosen to comment on the characters and their relationships with women largely through women’s non-existence, which is a daring choice to make in 2008. And it also contributes to “Dr. Girlfriend’s” place as one of the most fascinating supporting characters.
This season, in its themes of fatherhood and of digging up the past, has advanced plot, character, and the long-running themes, farther (typed ‘father’ for a second there) than I’d have expected, to great rewards…
…However, in its persistent draining of hope for the sake of biting comedy as well as trenchant commentary, they’re leaving themselves with very little room for long-term growth, aren’t they? After an episode like “The Invisible Hand of Fate,” how can you rate anyone’s chances for getting out alive, let alone to an unrealistically happy ending? The show is consistently one of the funniest and most enjoyable things on television, but I do wonder - will the consistently grim and near-nihilistic worldview eventually grind the characters down so far the humor is lost?
This is an entry in The X-Files Blog-a-thon over at South Dakota Dark. The last time I did one of these, I got a surprising amount of response, so it’s my intention to try to participate in blog-a-thon events whenever I’m able. I hope those of you reading can key me into some of the others going on as they occur, in case I miss them.
A lot has happened since “The X-Files” went off the air. The very way we perceive the government has shifted significantly in a way that it hasn’t since the days of JFK and Watergate - the era that “The X-Files” built its foundation upon in the tradition of all conspiracy theorists. It’s hard to imagine the show existing today as it did then; the Cigarette Smoking Man (Hey, Carter, if you ever want to have a go at his youth again, I’ll switch my brand to Morley’s for the role) would just look Mulder in the eye and tell him the truth.
“Yeah, we’re covering up aliens. And we’re listening to your every conversation, we track you by your library books and your U-Pass, and we have you on a list for sneezing within six miles of an airport. We scrapped the hybrid plan, though - we won’t need immortality or sanctuary, because we can take what we want, do what we want, and whoever disagrees will rot in Cuba or get blown off the map. Suck it up, Fox, and go back to your girlfriend, because Dr. Scully’s comfort will be your only panacea in the dark and cold world we’ve made for you. The truth is out there - in the open, where there’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s my understanding that some people still haven’t seen this. So I embed it here on the site for convenience’s sake…
…But. But, I’m not impressed. I know a lot of fandom takes this trailer as a sign that the movie is “faithful,” but it really makes me question what they believe that it’s faithful to.
One of the many, many problems with adapting “Watchmen” to the big screen, is that “Watchmen” is about pathetic people. Red-headed bastards, overweight nerds, rapists, murderers, and an inhuman alien. They’re ugly, and they’re sad, and they fail.
Er, spoiler.
In this trailer, everyone looks cool and exciting and dangerous. No matter what else happens, you’ve blown it, right out of the gate.
I’ve been chatting a bit with the folks over at The House Next Door about this trailer, and it reminds me of one of the main issues I wanted to address on this site.
I find that more and more often, fan reaction to a given work sours because they expect the product in question to be something that it isn’t. “The Wire” Season Five was roasted because characters supposedly “acted out of character,” when they didn’t at all. The plot was attacked for not building properly, when it did roughly the same thing structurally that it did in earlier seasons.
Nintendo fans this past week have been railing this past week over the E3 keynote, not really in response to what was announced but in fact the lack of what they specifically expected to appear - based largely on rumor if anything at all.
Similarly, when the game “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” (Replay contender?) hit stores, there was an uproar because anticipation had built up such a froth that rumors flew about and built the game up unrealistically, claiming character counts over fifty and other unrealistic ideas.
It’s all right to like or not like any given thing, but do so for what it is, not what nostalgia tints it as, or what you’d expect it to be. As I write my “Transformers” Replay, I can see aspects of this up and down the line. Many people remember their old toys as being, say, more posable and better designed than they really were, remember the cartoon as being less embarrassing (though its strengths and weaknesses are an article for another time) - an image is built up in their mind of what a “Transformer” is supposed to be, and they’re never happy - and certainly never publicly happy - with what they get instead.
This is where the “entitlement” I’ve mentioned in past articles conflicts so dangerously with critical and popular opinion - because the reception of even the most hotly-desired product can be seriously impacted by skewed and distorted perceptions, and it’s usually the biggest fans that hold these perceptions at all.
Welcome back to the “Replay” feature! These take a lot of effort to write, which is why I don’t do them frequently. The “replay” feature, for those who didn’t catch my last entry, is about franchises or properties which I think deserve another, closer look. And while this particular entry isn’t exactly an “obscure” property, I think that it’s often a misunderstood one, even when a lot of its criticism is on the mark. Like all replays, this will be written under the assumption that your knowledge of the work in question is limited. That said, let’s get rolling!
…Well, this is (A) to be expected, (B) going to be a long one, and (C) going to be all over the map. I’ll be breaking this up into quite a few chunks, I expect, so I can tackle all of the things worth saying. I’ve been surprisingly light on “Transformers” coverage on this site, considering my interests, and I’ll be interspersing this Replay with other material, like toy reviews and ideas for what I’d do differently with the material. Or that’s the intention, anyway.
If you read my previous “Replay,” you might remember that I mentioned that I often take interests in these properties because of their potential, rather than their actual content. In the previous replay, I contended that “Kingdom Hearts” lived up to its potential. In this case, here, we have a tale of almost universally-squandered potential… almost. Every once and a while, a moment or an idea would slip through that would show the validity of the concept as a whole, the merit to the characters as established, and a little more foundation that could be built off of in order to create something of actual thematic weight. Once, in the 1990’s, a grasp was made at that brass ring, and its uneven success stands as a monument to what could be done with the groundwork established.
I love them for nostalgia, yes, and I love them because I’m a nerd. But there’s something there, and I’m going to attempt to show you what that is.
Transformers: Animated, the newest iteration of the long-running franchise, has really come into its own in the latest (second) season. Fans were tentative about the full-blown return to youth-oriented storytelling, and the “Teen Titans”-like art style, but it has been slowly building its own version of the TF mythos over the last two years, and there are finally enough plot threads in play to make the program really engaging. The show does not have the narrative and thematic depth of the 90’s-era “Beast Wars” and “Beast Machines” shows - which endeavored to raise the property’s critical merit and often succeeded (on its own terms). However, as diverting entertainment, it’s starting to find its way.
The two-part “A Bridge Too Close,” the season finale, was rushed to fit - it needed a third chapter to flesh out - but it left a lot of tantalizing elements up in the air. For fans of the show, then, what’s left is speculating on the unanswered questions:
Will Starscream’s clones - who are clearly modeled after the Seekers - develop more-fully realized personalities, and acquire names, now that they serve Megatron? Or will these cannon fodder be wiped out with Megatron and Starscream(’s head) trapped out in space?
Speaking of, how will Megatron and Starscream(’s head) return to Earth with no space bridge? Will Shockwave find a way to bring them to Cybertron instead?
With Longarm Prime revealed to the Autobots as Shockwave, a traitor, will the Elite Guard move in on him now? Will Sentinel Prime be capable of subduing him?
And with Shockwave outed, what does this mean for Wasp(inator)? The Bumblebee-looking rogue Autobot has a score to settle with his yellow counterpart, but will his record be cleared before he destroys his chances?
What happened to Blurr and the clones who were sucked with him into the Space Bridge? And did Omega Supreme end up whereever they did? Blurr’s fate was glossed over in the rushed finale. Will we see a spotlight episode next year of Blurr, Omega, and maybe even the clones working together to get home?
Also, what’s up with the Dinobots? “Slag” and Swoop have yet to speak, and they weren’t to be seen in the finale, even when the ship finally emerged from Dinobot Island.
And finally, what exactly is Sari? Now that the long-teased reveal has been made - she doesn’t resemble Sumdac’s other robots, and an earlier episode with Blackarachnia had basically stated that she wasn’t a full robot. Is she a cyborg? Some kind of techno-organic android? Yes, this is why the Allspark chose her, but what does this mean for her future?
They’ve put themselves into an interesting place with the season’s trajectory. Insufficient follow-through on some of these arcs could eliminate some of their saved-up goodwill with the fanbase. It’s going to be interesting charting their process as the season goes on.
